Immigration: Signs of a Hard Struggle

Plenty of times, people see Mexicans as lesser people. Americans in particular, look down on a Mexican, call us a wet back, and act as if their history is more important than ours. In their mind, this may be true, but in a Mexican’s mind, our history is more important to ourselves. It may be that every race in the world suffered greatly at one point or another, but as of now, it is us the Hispanics, who suffer the most racially. More specifically, I will be talking about Mexicans, since it is what I am more familiar with.

            A huge issue that Americans have against immigrants coming to the U.S. is that there immigrants take most of the jobs. In my opinion, it is a crucial thing to say that immigrants take all of the jobs, or at least the working class jobs. It may be true that immigrants are taking positions that actual U.S. citizens could have had, but there is a problem here. If an actual U.S. citizen could had have these jobs, don’t they still have an advantage to getting these jobs? There are a lot of companies that hire illegal workers. We may not know the reason for why these companies do this, but I do know that illegal workers aren’t the only workers that these companies hire. If someone has their life stable, and basically has all the requirements to be successful in America, why are there so many people who give up on life and become homeless or commit suicide?

            My uncle, Antonio Ibarra, was the first from my mom’s side of the family to come over to the U.S. Antonio had hopes that he would find a better job over the border, and that he would one day be able to bring his family over here. In the 80’s, my uncle paid a coyote to cross him over. With little to no friends or family in the United States, my uncle managed to make something happen. He ended up finding a job in a company that paid minimum wage at the time. Over time, he met more people, began networking. Eventually, he landed a position in a job that would have great benefits in the future. As of this day, my uncle has been working in the same company for over 15 years. Looking back, it is not much, but to think about it, having a secure job like the one that he has was probably hard to come by around those times. Because of his hard work and dedication, my uncle is now getting paid over $30 an hour, has his own house, a brand new Acura, and his whole family in the U.S., thus, me writing this paper.

            I just think that if we all saw immigrants as welcome newcomers, then there would be greater things being done in America. The fact that there is discrimination already creates a lot of problems, now imagine how immigrants feel when they hear some of the most racist things. There are plenty Hispanics that I know of today, that are far more successful than an American who did not care to become successful in life. There are professors who are Hispanic, there are extremely rich people who are Hispanic. Just how there are Americans who are extremely wealthy but there are also Americans who have failed at life. It only took one brave Hispanic to say “I’m going to cross the border,” in order to give life to some of the great Hispanic leaders that we have today.